


insanity by numbers

by fatiguedfern



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Gen, Time Loop, and its more like kaede&everyone, the tagged relationships are just the most important/present
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 12:59:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10663116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatiguedfern/pseuds/fatiguedfern
Summary: No matter what she does, Kaede ends up waking in the same bed, surrounded by the same four walls and bearing witness to the same deaths.ORthe ndrv3 time-loop fix-it(kind of) au that was inevitable





	insanity by numbers

**Author's Note:**

> So this was kind of a filler fic that i used to procrastinate that's loosely inspired by **the** dr time-loop fic

Kaede had never been one to keep track of time, allowing hers to waste away while spending it coaxing melodies from monochrome tiles for the most part. It isn’t until her life and the others she had sworn to herself that she’d preserve were numbered to 48 hours that she becomes painfully aware of its presence.  
.  
It’s not the face of Saihara peering at her from underneath the brim of his hat or Amami’s lax smile as he swipes the paint brush across her cuticles that she thinks of as she chucks the metal sphere into the vent that would hopefully find its mark. Nor is it the blushing face of Chabashira as she teasingly compliments her, nor the stammering of Gokuhara’s voice as he thanks her for having the courage to approach him or even Ouma’s impish grin that he wears as he proudly tells her of his organisations far-stretching reach. It isn’t Momota’s booming encouragements or Harukawa’s fingers clenched around her hair as she denies having anything but hatred towards children. The image of Shirogane’s features twisting in excitement as she happily rambles on about her favourite characters or Yumeno’s sleepy gaze as she tiredly explains her magic doesn’t once enter her mind. It isn’t Toujo’s attentive hands tilting a teapot to allow a steady stream of liquid to exit or Shinguuji’s somewhat disturbing, but still flattering, appraisement nor Hoshi’s baritone telling her that association with a murder wasn’t in her best interest. It’s not Yonaga’s odd bloodlust on behalf of her god, nor is it Iruma’s mocking of her bust size or Kiibo’s abnormally formal dialect. It most definitely is not the gaping crimson eye of a manic teddybear. 

No, it’s time that plagues her mind. The time that she can feel slipping through her fingers as she fails to find the true mastermind.  
.  
Though time itself is in theory more fluid than any gender or sexuality, it still seems to have the habit of following a pattern of its own, as it's time that’s stapled to her conscious as oxygen finally completely refuses to enter her lungs and that laces her thoughts as she wakes on the bed in her dormroom. 

Exiting the room, she is met with the familiar faces of her supposedly lost classmates in exactly the same positions as the mourning before everything went to hell.

She can’t bring herself to return any of the other’s greetings as she slumps down into a chair. She can’t bring herself to worry too much when Hoshi is found with a knife thrust by his own arm plunged into his chest midafternoon. She can’t bring herself to look up as Hoshi’s corpse is dragged across an oversized tennis court. She can’t bring herself to care when Toujo deems her to have the least will to live and it’s her body that becomes an unexpected prop in Yumeno’s magic show. After all, dead people shouldn’t have a will to live.  
.  
It’s the same when she wakes up the next time. Same bed. Same faces. Same walking corpse.

But it’s not, because there’s never been a funk, even death, that Kaede couldn’t pull herself out of before and she won’t start now. She’ll fight this time.

And fight she does. She fights when she finds Saihara’s mangled corpse. She fights after Iruma attempts to cave Kaede’s own skull in with a wrench, only to be killed herself by Momota’s heroic intervention. She fights as corpses pile up one after the other and she fights to condemn Shirogane to the fate she shackled herself to. And finally she fights to keep the bile from rising in her throat as she exits the caged school with Harukawa’s hand clasped in her own.  
.  
It’s still not enough though, it would seem that even her best efforts would never be enough. She still refuses to accept her damned fate so easily. 

The next time she wakes she doesn’t hesitate to end things before they even start and as soon as she enters the same room as Shirogane she flings somewhat poorly phrased accusations at her. It takes Gokuhara holding her in a vice grip to keep her away from the startled cosplayer, though it only lasts until she bites through the flesh of his forearm and he loses control over his strength and snaps her neck. And, well, that put an end to that chapter.  
.  
The third time, she bashes Shirogane’s head against the wall until her blood coats the entirety of the patterned wallpaper. Though the mastermind is dead a trial is still held. The trial lasts all of twenty minutes and then Kaede’s dragged off to a slightly altered punishment.  
.  
The fourth time she follows her actions from her first time participating perfectly, hoping to learn something. Her time is wasted and the only thing she learns is that she should perhaps work on the trajectory of her contraption if she decides to try again, as she decides to check on her supposed victim afterwards, only to see Shirogane bludgeoning Amami to death with a mirror image of that which she had just thrown and now lay discarded on the carpeted floor.

The only difference is that she joins Amami on the bloodied floor.  
.  
She gives up on trying to directly hurt the mastermind herself and lightly hints at it to Saihara that everything would end rather quickly had someone just ended the mastermind’s existence. Their roles are reversed and it's him who is dragged off to his execution, but unlike Saihara who had stared at her throughout the entire duration of her execution, she doesn’t manage to observe anything but the result of her mislead guidance. 

Kaede makes it to the third murder and the motive is the same as always; the second murder to occur is redundant. Before the trial it becomes clear to her that Shinguuji killed Kiibo as he appeared to have tainted his vision of human beauty, and though in every walkthrough that Kaede has had of the game Shinguuji has proven himself to be far from a decent human being, no one deserves an execution at the hands of Monokuma, so she slits his throat before the trial can even begin. 

The murder is nullified and there’s no execution, but it leaves everyone else horrified. The only one even willing to speak to Kaede is Harukawa, who has seemed to gain some warped sense of respect towards her, but it doesn’t really matter either way, because by the time the fourth motive comes up, Iruma has deemed her as the largest threat towards them all and she’s stuck in a state of limbo within the virtual reality world soon enough.  
.  
She’s tired, but the newest loop isn’t. And every single aspect still attempts to act fresh, but it isn’t anymore and everything appears stale in her blood-soaked vision. 

At this stage she’s both directly and indirectly caused the death of all of her fellow participants other than, perhaps, her original victim.  
.  
The flaw within each timeline is so blatantly visible after playing a quick game of spot-the-difference that she’s tempted to allow her weak grip on the remaining few strands of her sanity slip completely. 

But, Kaede is nothing if not persistent and she’d end this personalised hell before it ended her.  
.  
She follows the steps of her plan from her first ever playthrough almost exactly once more, but she rights her aim and this time the sound of the splintering of Amami’s skull resounds throughout the library with a satisfied crack. The trial goes as planned and she greedily sucks at the air while she still can, knowing that time’s quota has been filled this time and that maybe now events might just play out as they were supposed to.

**Author's Note:**

> i have no doubt that there's a lot of plot inconsistencies so just shout at me in comments if anything is too insufferable


End file.
